DUTCHMAN'S BREECHES 

 (Boys and Girls. Snowboysj 



Dicentta cucullaria (L.) Bernh. 



Early spring It may have all started with that first bloodroot flower 

 Woods on a day when the March sun turned seventy and the 



wind was southerly. It may have started with snow 

 trilliums on a limestone hill that hadn't seen a beam of direct sunlight 

 since last summer. It may have started in a city park with spring beauties 

 which would bloom and be done long before the mowers clipped them 

 off. But it could not be officially spring until the dutchman's breeches 

 bloomed. 



They start up exceedingly early — little curled-over, naked, pinkish 

 stems bent as if to protect the tiny unformed leaves. They grow, stretch, 

 take on gTeenness, and in an incredibly short time, as one reckons the 

 progress of growth in the year, there are lacy clumps of grey-green leaves 

 among the old brown oak leaves on the forest floor, and eacli clump in 

 a few days has tall stalks, of crisp, puft'y, white flowers. The shape of the 

 dutchman's breeches flowers is their greatest charm, though their faint 

 perfume is delightful and the loaves are truly beautiful. The flowers are 

 as if made in a mold, two lialves neatly put together with flaring bottom 

 and wide-spread top, hung tenuously on the thinnest of hair-fine stems 

 which attach them, each at a different slant, to the main stem. 



Stems and leaves rise separately from the clusters of pink corm-roots 

 not far beneath the surface of the ground. There is really not much root 

 to account for all those leaves and flowers, just a climip of coral-pink 

 corms no bigger than a hickojy nut, lield fast by a few short white roots. 

 But in those conns there is enough strength to live through the winter, 

 and as early as the ground permits, to send up stems, foliage, and flowers. 



